HEYTEA Gongfu 3.6

The HEYTEA Gongfu 3.6 is $11.90 and 275 calories. Black tea with milk and a pistachio Viennese style cloud, and the most conventional drink on the Tea Lab board.

Gongfu is the brewing method rather than the leaf. It means many short steeps of a heavy dose of tea rather than one long steep of a small dose, which is how tea is served across southern China and Taiwan. What comes out is concentrated and layered instead of flat and strong.

That method matters here because the drink then gets milk poured into it. A tea brewed the ordinary way and cut with dairy tastes of milk with tea behind it. A tea brewed gongfu style and cut the same way still tastes of tea, and the malt note survives the pour.

The 3.6 is the milk fat figure, the same code used across the Tea Lab range. This is the black tea entry in a set that also covers gardenia, oolong and matcha, all built identically. Order two of them side by side and the leaf is the only thing that changes.

Pistachio sits on top as a whipped cloud. Against a floral tea the nut reads as a contrast. Against black tea it reads as an extension, because malt and toasted nut are already close to each other. This is the easiest of the four to like on a first order.

Numbers land at 22g of sugar, 14g of fat and 8g of protein. The protein figure is the highest in the Tea Lab range, which comes from milk in the base and cream in the cap.

People coming from a standard bubble tea shop will find this the closest thing to familiar on the board, though it is closer to a Hong Kong style milk tea with a dessert cap than to anything with pearls in it. There are no toppings in the cup at all.

Drink it within about ten minutes. The cloud is what makes the drink and it folds flat after that, leaving a good but ordinary milk tea behind.

For the same build on a floral leaf, the Gardenia 3.6 is $11.90. For a cheaper black tea with milk and no cloud, the Black Milk Tea is $8.49.